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Home, School, and Community Collaboration: Culturally Responsive Family Engagement (NULL)
Elias G. Carayannis, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
This series highlights emerging research and practice at the dynamic intersection of innovation, technology, and knowledge management, where individuals, organizations, industries, regions, and nations are harnessing creativity and invention to achieve and sustain growth. Volumes in the series explore the impact of innovation at the “macro” (economies, markets), “meso” (industries, firms), and “micro” levels (teams, individuals), drawing from such related disciplines as finance, organizational psychology, R&D, science policy, information systems, and strategy, with the underlying theme that in order for innovation to be useful it must involve the sharing and application of knowledge.
This book series is indexed in Scopus.
Pauline Mattsson · Eugenia Perez Vico · Linus Salö
Editors
Making Universities Matter
Collaboration, Engagement, Impact
Editors
Pauline Mattsson
Department of Business Administration and CIRCLE
Lund University
Lund, Sweden
Linus Salö
Centre for Research on Bilingualism
Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden
Eugenia Perez Vico
School of Business, Innovation and Sustainability
Halmstad University
Halmstad, Sweden
CIRCLE
Lund University
Lund, Sweden
ISSN 2197-5698
ISSN 2197-5701 (electronic)
Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management
ISBN 978-3-031-48798-9
ISBN 978-3-031-48799-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48799-6
Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
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Introduction: Universities and the Matter of Mattering ............... 1
Pauline Mattsson, Eugenia Perez Vico, and Linus Salö
Engaging in Societal Collaboration Through Reflexivity: Experiences from a Cross-Disciplinary Pilot Course for Faculty ........ 11
Anna Jonsson, Eugenia Perez Vico, and Diamanto Politis
Proximity and Inequality in Academia ............................... 33
Annika Ralfs
Conceptualizing Scholar-Activism Through Scholar-Activist Accounts 61
Farzana Bashiri
How Promotion Guidelines Reflect Swedish Higher Education Institutions’ Societal Collaboration Strategies 99
Eugenia Perez Vico, Erik Joelsson, Pauline Mattsson, and Gustaf Nelhans
Will the Center Hold? What Research Centers Do to Universities and to Societal Challenges .......................................... 123
Mats Benner and Anders Hylmö
Governing by Organizing: The Context of Universities in Sweden ...... 141
Ulrika Bjare
Responsive Research Quality Articulations of the Humanities .........
Klara Müller
Sources of Policy: Knowledge Brokering in Governmental Reports .....
Linus Salö, Björn Hammarfelt, and Gustaf Nelhans
Valorizing the Humanities: Impact Stories, Acting Spaces, and Meandering Knowledge Flows 211
Eugenia Perez Vico, Sverker Sörlin, Linnea Hanell, and Linus Salö
Introduction: Universities and the Matter of Mattering
Pauline Mattsson , Eugenia Perez Vico, and Linus Salö
Making Universities Matter
Universities have long been integral to society, fulfilling a vital role as institutions for knowledge development, exchange, and diffusion. Even though universities have only in recent decades been portrayed as bridging the gap between academia and society through interdisciplinary collaboration and engagement, they have always been founded on societal needs and thereby have also recognized the importance of interactions with society.
Recently, however, there has been a wave of discussion about the role of universities—within universities, among policymakers, and in the public sphere. On the one hand, there is an increasing public skepticism toward science fired by the replication crisis (Fanelli, 2018), the mistrust of experts (Eyal, 2019), and the (mis)use of scholarly work for political purposes (Peci et al., 2023). This skepticism is also fueled by the widespread occurrence of unethical behaviors and misconduct—including fabrication and falsification (Biagioli et al., 2019). On the other hand, there are repeated calls for universities to matter more—to spread their impact further, broader, and in new ways (Benner et al., 2022; Upton et al., 2014). Indeed, there has been a global
P. Mattsson (B)
Department of Business Administration, Lund University, Box 7080, 223 63 Lund, Sweden e-mail: pauline.mattsson@fek.lu.se
P. Mattsson · E. Perez Vico CIRCLE, Lund University, Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden e-mail: eugenia.perez@hh.se
E. Perez Vico
School of Business, Innovation and Sustainability, Halmstad University, Box 823 , 301 18 Halmstad, Sweden
L. Salö
Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: linus.salo@biling.su.se
P. Mattsson et al. (eds.), Making Universities Matter, Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48799-6_1
push to reinvigorate universities’ social responsibilities, to reorient toward extrascientific modes of knowledge exchange, and to make research accountable to end users and not only target the scientific community (Sarewitz, 2016; see also Cuppen et al., 2019). Together, these calls highlight an increased imperative for making universities matter more to society by embracing a broader societal responsibility, in terms of both scope and magnitude. As the perception of universities’ societal role continues to evolve, there is a broadened understanding that goes beyond traditional notions of industry–academia collaboration and technological progress for economic growth. Instead, universities are now seen as integral to a complex system that embraces diverse interactions and involves multiple stakeholders, with the aim of driving transformative progress within society (D’Este et al., 2018; Trencher et al., 2014).
While the desire to make universities more socially engaged and impactful—to make them matter more—is well-intended, it also introduces a number of challenges and tensions that must be carefully navigated. As the seeds of previously mentioned public skepticism reveal, as universities seek to broaden their societal roles, a number of concerns emerge that may threaten their core functions and integrity, or the view thereof of some actors both within and outside of academia. One such concern is that the drive to prioritize making universities matter to current societal issues may shift resources and attention away from fundamental research and knowledge quest for its own sake. This could jeopardize long-term scientific advances, which have historically formed vital building blocks for universities’ contributions to society (Gulbrandsen & Smeby, 2005; Sauermann & Stephan, 2013). If research grows more focused on current societal demands, there are expressed concerns about overlooking path-breaking and curiosity-driven projects that may not yield immediate practical applications but may lead to future discoveries (Fleming et al., 2019; Spector et al., 2018). Another source of concern is the potential for conflicts of interest and challenges to academic independence and openness that pressure to engage with various stakeholders outside of academia can bring about (Schmid & Betsch, 2019; Tartari & Breschi, 2012). Questions about research integrity and objectivity may arise as universities form tighter partnerships with industry, government, and other societal actors in their quest to matter more. As universities are integrated into complex dependencies involving multiple stakeholders, power dynamics and inequalities can emerge. Different actors might have varying degrees of influence, leading to potential biases in research agendas and outcomes. There are thus concerns about ensuring that universities’ engagement with external partners is appropriate and transparent and does not jeopardize the integrity of their academic pursuits. As a result, the importance of striking a balance between collaborative engagement and critical independence has been highlighted. For universities to maintain their deep-rooted societal role, we must better understand how the nature and dynamics of such a role may determine and potentially strengthen their ability to matter. The present volume seeks to tap into these debates and, moreover, to contribute to the evolving literature on universities’ role in society through a coherent set of chapters, all of which speak to questions of universities’ collaboration, engagement, and impact. More specifically, we address questions such
as: How can the knowledge produced in and through the activities of universities matter beyond intra-scientific knowledge exchange? How have the conditions for universities mattering changed over time, and how do they vary across disciplines or areas of scientific conduct? Attending to such questions, the volume explores how universities can extend their impact beyond traditional higher education missions. By presenting a collection of insightful inquiries, we strive to deepen our comprehension of the diverse dimensions in which universities matter, shedding light on the how, where, and when of their influence in and on the societies that enable their continuation.
The studies in this volume arose from a knowledge platform funded by the Swedish Innovation Agency Vinnova between 2015 and 2023. The platform’s goal was to shed light on how universities organize their activities and how they align with various societal interests, including those within universities. The platform brought together researchers and policymakers in a variety of collaborative projects, policy debates, and studies centered on topical discussions of mutual interest for the many issues addressed in this volume. These circumstances help explain the tendency of the present volume to draw on historical examples and empirical materials mainly from the Swedish context in the discussion of past, present, and potential future roles of universities in society. While international perspectives are also covered in the volume, we hold that Sweden stands out as a captivating country to explore. Firstly, Sweden is a country that allocates substantial funding to research in proportion to its population. Secondly, the country has witnessed a growing influence of external funding actors, resulting in mounting expectations to foster collaboration with society and ensure that their work transcends academic boundaries and benefits the broader community. Thirdly, in Sweden, the so-called third mission is institutionalized and enshrined in legal frameworks that stipulate that higher education institutions should, apart from teaching and conducting research, collaborate with society and make sure that research results come into use (e.g., Benneworth et al., 2015).
The present chapter introduces the volume, including the contexts, themes, and issues addressed herein. In so doing, it contextualizes the included chapters in addition to outlining their topics, angles, and arguments. First, however, we turn to the idea of “mattering,” the core concept of the volume.
The Matter of Mattering
In the present volume, the pivotal notion of “mattering” serves as the lynchpin concept that runs through all chapters. Its centrality necessitates delving deeper into the concept to clarify and expand on its meaning. Given that “to matter” is to be of importance or have some sort of effect on somebody or something, the notion of “mattering” encompasses various connotations and implications within the context of universities. What is it for universities to matter? Matter to whom? Matter how and when? Engaging with such corrective questions is vital in order to avoid reductionistic
understandings of the questions at hand. Universities may matter in different ways, many of which go unnoticed, to different types of stakeholders.
The ways in which universities matter range from the microscopic scale and individuals who profit or flourish from their existence to the macroscopic scale and questions of pervasive sociocultural change. The former scale pinpoints the fact that universities logically mean something to those who pass through them, leaving either with degree certificates, life-long bildung, or personal growth (e.g., Nussbaum, 2010), or those who experience the fruits of academic knowledge through books, documentaries, exhibitions, or other media. They also include those who benefit from health, technological, or environmental improvements, have their lives and jobs made easier, or profit from commercial inventions or solutions originating in academia. The latter is the collective and cumulative scale at which the knowledges that flow through universities at different points in time exert more or less tangible influences on the environments in which they are placed (e.g., Myhre, 2011). This includes the accumulation of knowledge that educates the general public and enhances our understanding of society, finds solutions to societal challenges, and through the establishment of new firms, stimulates the creation of job opportunities and competitiveness.
In direct and indirect ways, then, universities may mean something to publics or beneficiaries of research and other university-based activities. However, mattering is not a one-way street in which extramural actors are merely recipients of academic activities. As we will explicate later in this chapter, mattering can include an interactive process in which the benefits of the relationship are mutual, and mattering is more than just getting a direct return on taxpayers’ money from public universities (Laredo, 2007; Nedeva, 2008). Nevertheless, for universities to matter is also a political request and a warranted public demand. As policymakers and society place greater emphasis on universities being accountable for public and private funding investments, there is a growing plea for universities to matter with expectations of some sort of return. Accordingly, mattering may also be seen as a demand placed upon universities as a way of sustaining their legitimacy.
In this light, there is kinship between mattering as a normative idea and Kerr’s (1982) oft-quoted expression “the uses of the university.” Firstly, “mattering,” as well as “uses,” alludes to the idea that universities house a plurality of knowledges that affect—and should affect—the environments of which they are integral parts. Secondly, they both seem to feed on the idea that universities are institutions whose knowledge resources can—and should—be extracted and utilized for a range of different purposes, all of which change over time. As mentioned earlier, the expectations that society places on universities and their own pursuit of fulfilling those expectations have undergone significant changes over time, from ancient establishments of wisdom and learning to contemporary interdisciplinary knowledge and innovation hubs. In this way, the long-standing pursuit of knowledge production has been reorganized to encompass additional forms of advantages, benefits, and values aligned with the demands of the entrepreneurial university (Clark, 2003a, 2003b).
We recognize the importance of maintaining a critical gaze on such developments. Correspondingly, we hold that it is important to establish and defend a broad and multifaceted understanding of mattering. Indeed, in science policy circles, there
has been a tendency to ascribe value mostly to research that contributes to material innovations, economic growth, or practical solutions. Similarly, the literature on how universities can matter has mostly focused on universities as the main knowledge producers that contribute to the development of tangible outputs. While important, it would be a perilous mistake to conflate the raison d’être of universities with simplified conceptions of knowledge utility. It is a stillborn project to single out knowledge that does not matter, ultimately because there is no easy way of knowing what will matter when and to whom.
The idea of mattering is designed to bolster and enrich the discussion on universities in societies. While there are manifold dimensions of mattering, the present volume necessarily centers on a demarcated selection. A first delineation presents itself through our choice to focus on research-related activities, which admittedly are not the only mission through which universities can matter. In many countries, universities have been expected to fulfill three major interrelated missions: education, the generation of new knowledge, and the use and transfer of that knowledge to help benefit societal development. Although we recognize the critical societal importance of education and training of students, this book primarily focuses on how knowledge is generated and disseminated through the second and third missions. This is due to the fact that the unique and undeniable role of education in constructing society has been part of universities’ tasks since their founding and it is rarely central to the debate over how and whether universities matter.
Mattering Through Collaboration, Engagement, and Impact
In this volume, we approach mattering through three key concepts associated with the manifold ways mattering can be grasped and achieved: collaboration, engagement, and impact. While we argue that all these concepts, from different perspectives, are central to the understanding of how universities matter, they are not exhaustive; we acknowledge that there are aspects of mattering beyond those covered by our key concepts. However, previous literature has argued that some kind of engagement is needed to create impact, and this is facilitated through collaboration between actors from academia and society. Before going into the individual chapters that, separately or jointly, deal with the three concepts, we will briefly outline why and how each concept contributes to an increasing understanding of mattering. Collaboration involves the mutually beneficial interaction between diverse actors within academia and between academia and external actors (Bozeman & Boardman, 2014). Such collaborations allow universities to leverage diverse knowledge and perspectives within universities and in various societal contexts, fostering novel approaches to complex challenges. Previous literature has mainly focused solely on academic collaboration or on collaboration between academia and industry, where the latter in both policy and academic spheres has become synonymous with societal collaboration (Clark, 2011; Wagner, 2018). To matter beyond tangible outputs such as publications and commercial products, collaboration must take place through
mutual interactions with a multitude of stakeholders beyond business. To address this partly limited view, several chapters in this volume address collaboration from the perspective of how different environments and cultures can create barriers to as well as strengthen collaboration.
Engagement involves deep and active commitment to concerns of importance to different sectors, such as industry, communities, public organizations, and policymakers, to ensure relevance and responsiveness and to mobilize for societal change and renewal (D’Este et al., 2018). Also, the existing body of engagement literature has shown a certain narrowness when it comes to examining academia’s potential interactions with external entities. In a comprehensive analysis of academic engagement, Perkmann et al. (2021) determined that prior research has primarily focused on activities such as consulting, contractual agreements, and collaborative research, with industries as the primary means through which academia interacts with external stakeholders. These studies, however, provide a limited view on engagement. The chapters concerned with engagement in this book expand the conversation about academic engagement by going beyond conventional descriptions of engagement focused on commercialization and entrepreneurship and exploring diverse engagement channels in political and social movement spheres. By doing so, we emphasize the broader significance of universities’ engagement with various actors to widen the societal impact of their endeavors.
Lastly, impact focuses on understandings of the long-term consequences that result from the pursuit of knowledge, making a progressive difference in society. While collaboration and engagement with external actors emphasize the importance of actively involving specific stakeholders to whom universities should matter, the concept of impact focuses on the outcomes of these interactions (Bornmann, 2013; Donovan, 2011; Martin, 2011). With the increasing emphasis on impact, scientific as well as external evaluations have largely come to focus on measurable, often quantitative, indicators such as publications, patents, and start-ups. These, however, only cover a small segment of the multifaceted ways in which universities can make a meaningful difference. The chapters in this volume dedicated to examining impact discuss different channels through which impact can be achieved. Moreover, they acknowledge that measuring impact goes beyond academic metrics and encompasses the broader societal implications of research. The chapters recognize that impactful research is not confined to immediate outcomes but rather unfolds through unpredictable and meandering knowledge flows, influenced by the actions of external actors.
The first section of the volume includes chapters that primarily discuss the role of collaboration as a driver for making universities matter. In Chap. 2, Jonsson, Perez Vico, and Politis investigate the role of post-doctoral education in developing faculty and support staff capacity for long-term and integrated societal participation and collaboration. Taking as its starting point the need and desire for the individual academic researchers and teachers to matter, the authors demonstrate, through a study of their own training initiative, how education can promote reflective scholars of societal collaboration.
Chapter 3, by Ralfs, delves into the role of proximity in collaboration and reveals how the potential of universities to matter is determined by their position in the global system of science. The point of departure is the assumption that collaboration between scholars is seen as a means to handle inequality between the Global North and Global South. The conditions for collaboration and types of inequalities are discussed using a multidimensional proximity framework.
The second section of the volume discusses the role of engagement. In Chap. 4 by Bashiri, the focus is on researchers that use activism to engage in societal challenges. The chapter provides an overview of existing literature on activism and argues that scholar activism may bring academic work closer to social impact and transformation, particularly within the context of social justice and the issue of mattering to social movements and the struggles of the people.
Chapter 5, by Perez Vico, Joelsson, Mattsson, and Nelhans, links to both the concepts of collaboration and engagement by investigating the connection between university collaboration strategies and how engagement skills are valued on an operational level. More particularly, the chapter investigates the significance of mattering by analyzing the assessment guidelines for docentship of Swedish universities. The use of strategies is a way for universities to signal their intentions and emphasis on collaboration. However, as this chapter demonstrates, these intentions are not necessarily implemented internally.
In Chap. 6, Benner and Hylmö study research centers as a policy model for engagement and, more specifically, how they have been set up in relation to other parts of the university and what types of engagement and collaboration they foster. The authors emphasize the importance of alignment between work modes, university strategy, and partner orientation to maximize the benefits of collaboration with extramural actors.
The third concept that needs to be tackled in order to understand the consequences of how universities can matter is the impact that the above-mentioned collaboration and engagement with society may have. In Chap. 7, Bjare gives a historical overview of how the Swedish state has sought to have an impact on how universities should matter. Through metagovernance, as Bjare argues, the state has attempted to steer the direction of policy agendas for educational reform of Swedish academia in ways that advance the means through which universities can matter to society at large. This indirect way of governing may be exemplified by attending to the ways in which changes in research policy affect the development of research quality in different areas of research. In Chap. 8, Müller discusses how such dynamics have unfolded with regard to the humanities in Sweden. She shows that dominant ideas in the national policy space, for instance concerning quality metrics, have not had a straightforward impact on the humanities. Rather, understandings of research quality in the humanities have been shaped in response to, and thus in collaboration with, articulations of research quality more generally.
Chapter 9, by Salö, Hammarfelt, and Nelhans, illustrates yet again that collaboration, engagement, and impact are intertwined concepts with nested scopes. The chapter deals with policy impact, understood as knowledge uptake in science–policy interaction, by using the sources of references in governmental reports. It argues that the knowledge produced in settings where political decisions are made has not
been acknowledged as a channel for scientific output and that it rarely lingers in debates about how to measure research impact. It also points to the value of agency in the production of impactful texts: researchers who seek to matter can enhance their chances by adapting their publishing practices.
By the same token, in Chap. 10, Perez Vico, Sörlin, Hanell, and Salö point to agentive collaboration and engagement as means to achieve impact. The chapter takes as its departure point the marginalization of humanities knowledge in research policy and emphasizes the need to understand how the valorization of humanities knowledge generates societal impact. The authors propose using historical impact stories as a methodological approach to gain a deeper understanding of valorization and its unpredictable nature. They introduce the concepts of “acting space” and “meandering knowledge flows” to shed light on the access, collaborators, and channels that enable knowledge valorization in the humanities.
To conclude, this volume offers what we hope is a compelling argument for redefining the concept of mattering within the context of universities. By advocating for a context-sensitive and nonnormative understanding, we shed light on the potential meanings and implications of mattering that extend beyond conventional interpretations that have emphasized industry–academia interactions with a focus on commercialization. The chapters of the volume reveal that “to matter” encompasses diverse dimensions, including collaboration with a diversity of actors and modes, engagement far beyond industry interaction, and the production of fundamental scientific knowledge. While collaboration and engagement with external actors are commonly associated with mattering, we have also emphasized the importance of producing scientific knowledge that addresses unknown future societal challenges. This expanded perspective acknowledges the crucial role of universities in generating knowledge that can effectively respond to the evolving needs of society. Furthermore, we have explored the concept of external knowledge partners and beneficiaries—the individuals or groups to whom universities should genuinely matter. Through examining perspectives on the relationship between the science community and these external actors, we have highlighted the shared responsibility and collective act of making universities matter. By fostering understanding, dialogue, and mutual recognition, universities can establish meaningful connections with diverse stakeholders and effectively address their unique needs and aspirations.
In this light, the book may contribute to broadening the dominant understandings of impact that have been focused on interaction with a few actors, such as industry and policymakers. It highlights the many aspects of how universities matter in society as a whole and how mattering can be further improved by considering both an evolutionary and a futuristic perspective. Taken together, the scope and focus of the volume offer a multifaceted and critical understanding of the many ways in which universities have mattered, currently matter, and can matter in the future. Such understandings enrich present-day debates on impacts, practices, and conditions for making universities matter in society.
Acknowledgements We are grateful to the Swedish Innovation Agency, Vinnova for funding the majority of the work presented in the volume (grant numbers 2015-04473 and 2019-03679).
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Engaging in Societal Collaboration Through Reflexivity: Experiences from a Cross-Disciplinary Pilot Course for Faculty
Anna Jonsson , Eugenia Perez Vico , and Diamanto Politis
Introduction
Recently, voices have been raised calling for increased collaboration between academia and society, stemming from expectations that collaboration will make universities matter by producing new knowledge for solving societal problems related to urgent issues such as inequality, health, environmental degradation, and climate change (Benneworth et al., 2017; Jonsson et al., 2021). However, forging the path to making universities matter through fruitful collaboration demands careful consideration. On the one hand, collaboration can enrich the scholarly work of teachers and researchers by producing empirical data and infrastructure, inspiring new research endeavors (Perez Vico, 2018; Perez Vico & Hallonsten, 2019), and opening up new conversations and mutual learning opportunities (Jonsson, 2019; Terosky, 2018). On the other hand, societal collaboration requires time, effort, and skills to identify common interests and build trust (Perkmann & Walsh, 2009; Tartari & Breschi, 2012). In addition, academic values such as openness and independence may influence the incentives for collaboration (Bruneel et al., 2010; Slaughter et al., 2002). To
A. Jonsson (B) · D. Politis
Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, P.O. Box 7080, 220 07 Lund, Sweden
e-mail: anna.jonsson@fek.lu.se
D. Politis
e-mail: Diamanto.politis@fek.lu.se
E. Perez Vico
School of Business, Innovation and Sustainability, Halmstad University, P.O. Box 823, 301 18 Halmstad, Sweden
CIRCLE, Lund University, Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
P. Mattsson et al. (eds.), Making Universities Matter, Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48799-6_2
be better equipped for an enriching societal collaboration, managers, policymakers, and individual scholars need to acknowledge both the challenges and the opportunities, not least if the ambition is to develop higher education institutions (HEIs) where collaboration can proceed in a reflective and rigorous way.
While we see an increasing call for scholars to engage and collaborate with actors outside of academia, it becomes apparent that there are multifaceted interpretations and interconnected concepts that may pose challenges or intricacies when it comes to heeding these calls. Despite conceptual overlaps, we can identify two distinct approaches to societal collaboration from a scholarly standpoint: as an object of study and as a scientific endeavor. Scholars who approach societal collaboration as an object of study investigate and analyze its various aspects, such as motivations, processes, conditions, outcomes, and challenges, and gain an understanding of the dynamics, impacts, and factors that contribute to effective collaboration between academia and external stakeholders. Concepts that relate to societal collaboration as an object of study and that have paved the way for these insights include, among others, academic engagement (Perkmann et al., 2021), third-stream activities (Molas-Gallart et al., 2002), and productive interactions (Spaapen & Van Drooge, 2011). Societal collaboration can also be regarded as a scientific endeavor in and of itself. This viewpoint emphasizes the use of scientific principles, methodologies, and rigorous investigation to advance the practice of collaborative engagement. The scholarship of engagement by Boyer (1996), integrated research (Van Kerkhoff, 2014), engaged scholarship (Van de Ven, 2007), and various approaches connected to action research (Reason & Bradbury, 2008) are examples of this standpoint.
Although these two scholarly standpoints have had successful developments on their own, they have rarely cross-fertilized and informed each other, representing undeveloped potential. Drawing on a synthesis of these concepts, adapted for the Swedish higher education context following the origin of this study, we define societal collaboration as the participative form of academic work (integrated into research, teaching, and outreach) that involves engagement with various types of actors outside of academia (Perez Vico, 2018).
Despite the increased contemporary demand for engagement and collaboration, the idea of strengthening the societal engagement of academia is not new. Early on, Ernest Boyer (1990, 1996) called for including engagement as an integral part of the “academic scholarship” in which societal collaboration and engagement are regarded as directly tied to the academic discipline and thus require the rigor, critical reflection, and accountability traditionally associated with research. Developing such skills and academic rigor entails reflecting on existing practices and acquiring comprehensive academic knowledge about societal collaboration. It requires linking theory with practice in a critical and nuanced way, and engagement in reflexivity (cf. Alvesson, 2007; Cunliffe, 2002; Jonsson et al., 2023). Scholars need to scrutinize underlying assumptions about their perceived and enacted societal role and their engagement.
Yet, when looking into various efforts to organize for societal collaboration, we detect a lack of reflexivity related to these issues in the everyday work of contemporary academics. Based on this observation, and with the intention of creating a space
for reflexivity to draw on the idea of a “reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration” as an extension of Boyer’s argument about “scholarship of engagement,” we initiated a cross-disciplinary pilot course to discuss these issues.
The motivation for initiating a pilot course was that faculty education initiatives have been highlighted as a promising tool for scholarship development (Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017). Moreover, scholars have identified a need to strengthen the capability of HEI employees through sharing and building on existing knowledge on societal engagement and collaboration from both theory and practice (cf. Jonsson et al., 2021). This need has also been acknowledged outside of Sweden as scholars have pointed to the lack of theoretical framing in faculty development initiatives for societal engagement and collaboration (Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017). Yet, while the literature has yielded important insights about the conditions for societal engagement and collaboration in academia, covering issues such as academic promotion (Crookes et al., 2015; Glass et al., 2011) and supportive institutional structures (Giles, 2008; Sandmann et al., 2008), less attention has been given to the particular role that education initiatives geared toward faculty can play in fostering a long-term and integrated societal collaboration capacity in HEIs (Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017). Further, most initiatives, as well as literature on faculty development interventions related to societal engagement and collaboration, concern descriptions of shorter consultations, workshops, or fellowship programs (Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017).
In this regard, there is little recognition of the role of courses targeting collective reflections among diverse participants in developing skills and academic rigor toward a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration. This chapter offers insights from a case study of a cross-disciplinary pilot course offered to faculty and support staff at Swedish universities, which corresponded to approximately three weeks of work spread over three months. The study aims to explore how skills and academic rigor for engaging in societal collaboration can be developed toward a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration and engagement. Building on the experiences from the pilot course, we explore and discuss the participants’ reflections on how their partaking in the course may support a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration. The findings are relevant for scholars, university management, and policy actors interested in fostering HEIs’ long-term and integrated societal collaboration capacity.
Means for Strengthening a Scholarship of Societal Collaboration Through Reflexivity
The need to develop skills and capabilities for societal collaboration was one of the aspects Boyer (1990) raised in his argument for expanding the notion of scholarship. He suggested four broader forms of scholarship: discovery, integration, application, and teaching. Compared to academia’s efforts to embrace the scholarship of teaching (Hutchings & Shulman Lee, 1999), less attention has been given to societal engagement and collaboration, which are important aspects of the other forms of
scholarship, particularly the scholarship of discovery and application. Nevertheless, there has been a noteworthy drive to incorporate Boyer’s views into faculty development in the US (Blanchard et al., 2009), although there has been much less interest in doing so in a European context.
Following Boyer’s (1996) view, societal collaboration concerns ensuring a societal impact from academic work while at the same time enriching academic work itself. In this regard, theory and practice offer different and complementary insights into phenomena that pave the way for a thicker understanding of reality (Perez Vico, 2018; Van de Ven, 2007). Boyer (1990) distinguishes between general services that academics provide to a community and scholarship activities that are directly tied to the academic discipline, thus requiring the rigor, critical reflection, and accountability traditionally associated with research. Based on this logic, societal collaboration is not considered a third mission but entails teaching, research, and outreach. Therefore, according to Boyer’s distinction, societal collaboration should be viewed as an integral part of academic tasks rather than a separate one—a view that echoes that of many scholars (e.g., Laredo, 2007; Nedeva, 2008). This alignment of perspectives among scholars not only reinforces the significance of integrating societal collaboration into academic endeavors but also underscores the growing recognition within the scholarly community of the transformative potential and value of collaborative engagement with external stakeholders.
Although Boyer (1990, 1996) repeatedly emphasized the need for this consideration under the term “scholarship of engagement,” and despite some interest in collaborative scholarship approaches (e.g., Van de Ven, 2007), societal collaboration has not seen the same comprehensive scholarly journey as teaching has. While teaching has long been recognized as a core component of academic work, with pedagogical theories and practices extensively studied and developed, the exploration and understanding of societal collaboration as an academic skill have not received comparable attention. Scholarship in teaching has flourished, with research and discourse focusing on effective teaching methods, curriculum development, student learning outcomes, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. In contrast, the scholarly investigation of societal collaboration as an academic practice and skill, its methodologies, impact, and integration within academic disciplines, remains comparatively limited.
The concept of reflexivity has been an important component in both the scholarly development of teaching and the development of scholarly rigor in general (Alvesson, 2007; Cunliffe, 2002). Through a reflexive approach, academics can engage in continuous questioning, evaluation, and refinement of their ideas and theories, as well as of the impact of their teaching approaches and practices. Reflexivity prompts researchers and educators to engage in ongoing dialogue with themselves, their peers, and their broader communities, fostering a spirit of intellectual curiosity, growth, and adaptability.
Informed by the promises of reflexivity to support learning and develop academic rigor, we suggest that a “scholarship of engagement” should also include reflexivity as it provides a space for debating assumptions and differences in practices (Lövbrand, 2011; Phillips et al., 2013). Reflexivity enables academics to scrutinize
current collaboration strategies, values, and beliefs and identify new options and alternative ways of collaborating. In this way, reflexivity can assist academics in making informed decisions about when and how to engage in collaboration, thus paving the way for developing a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration.
In line with these ideas, the pedagogical background for the pilot course was to provide a space where participants could critically question assumptions underlying their own practices (Cunliffe & Jun, 2005). In this context, we further apply Schön’s (1984) ideas of the reflective practitioner, meaning that theory is used to reflect on practices and vice versa. Based on Schön’s (1984) ideas of the advantages of collaborative reflection among participants from diverse disciplines and contexts, Schratz (1993) further proposed a method for developing reflective professionality in teaching. While Schön (1984) and Argyris (1991) are mainly concerned with critical reflection that connects theory and practice, reflexivity also involves questioning the basic assumptions underlying the ends, means, and relevance of a practice (Cunliffe & Jun, 2005). Reflexivity goes beyond learning through reflection to include critical self-reflection in the rigorous critique of routinized practices, individual thought patterns, responsibility, and contributions related to social conditions (see also Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2017).
Course Content and Outline
DrawingonBoyer’s (1990) “scholarship of engagement” and a reflexive approach, we designed a pilot course. The ambition was to offer participants an opportunity to critically scrutinize assumptions underlying their practice through scholarly eyes and connect practical and theoretical perspectives.
We developed a set of qualification descriptors encompassing knowledge, skills, and judgment that make up a scholarship of societal collaboration, reflecting existing descriptions of such competencies (Blanchard et al., 2009; Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017). The descriptors were adapted to a Swedish institutional context and served as learning outcomes with key implications for the course design, delivery, assessment, and standards (see Table 1). The learning outcomes targeted the ability to discuss what societal collaboration is, how it can be understood, who is expected to contribute, what outcomes academia and society can expect from it, and why it is considered important.
The course was structured into several modules covering key themes. Each module was designed drawing on a diverse set of pedagogical approaches to enrich course participants’ pool of experiences and to encourage reflexivity for learning. The modules included conventional seminar-type lectures with the course and guest lecturers, experience-sharing workshops with the participants, as well as panel discussions with invited guests representing different perspectives on the selected themes. The participants were asked to read the assigned literature and other course material for each module and document their own (or a colleague’s) experiences related to the theme. This form of preparation served as a point of departure for the
Table 1 Learning outcomes for the course
Qualification descriptors
Knowledge and understanding
Skills and abilities
Judgment and approach
Learning outcomes
Describe different perspectives on societal collaboration
Account for key concepts related to the nature, impact, and ethics of societal collaboration
Discuss the various practices of societal collaboration related to research and education
Explain how societal collaboration relates to associated concepts (and to the Swedish higher education ordinance)
Derive the particularities of societal collaboration within the context of one’s scholarly field, and relate it to other fields Derive and characterize potential challenges with societal collaboration related to ethical aspects, conflicts of interest, and costs
Identify potential opportunities for societal collaboration and assess the suitability of engaging in these given presented conditions
Critically evaluate one’s ability and prerequisites related to societal collaboration in a particular situation
Critically discuss strategic considerations related to engaging in societal collaboration
experience-sharing workshops and enabled collective reflection. To pass the course, the participants needed to demonstrate that they had fulfilled the learning outcomes through a written assignment of (future) practical use to themselves. In Table 2,we offer an overview of the modules and the assignments.
The pilot course was made available to faculty members across all Swedish universities, and it was organized and delivered on two occasions. The initial course, held during the fall of 2019, encompassed a series of three on-campus sessions spread over a period of three weeks, hosted at distinct universities located in diverse cities. Thirteen participants, comprising researchers and educators from six universities, took part. On the second occasion, the course transitioned to an online format in response to the Covid-19 pandemic that arose during the fall of 2020. To facilitate remote learning, a digital learning platform was established, and all lectures, featuring the course instructors and a guest lecturer, were pre-recorded. These recorded video materials varied in duration, ranging from 10 to 30 min each. The experience-sharing workshops, panel discussions, and guest lectures with invited speakers were all held via Zoom. On this second occasion, the course participants were more diverse, representing both support staff responsible for collaborative efforts at universities (six participants) and faculty members (three participants). The purpose of a diverse composition was to bring together faculty and individuals from support functions that facilitate the core activities of academic work and often underpin collaborative
Table 2 Course content and assignment
Modules
1. Introduction and conceptual discussion—what is societal collaboration?
• Introduction to the course and its pedagogical approach
• Existing perspectives on societal collaboration
• Positioning societal collaboration vis-à-vis related concepts (e.g., the third mission, innovation, research utilization)
• Overview of formal expectations of societal collaboration
2. Research and practical examples of societal collaboration in research and education
• Practical perspectives on societal collaboration in research and education
• Practical examples from various forms of collaboration in education and research, respectively
• Dialogue drawing on documented experiences from participants
3. Research and practical examples of societal collaboration in tech transfer and outreach
• Perspectives on societal collaboration in knowledge/technology transfer
• Perspectives on societal collaboration in outreach/communication
• Practical examples from various forms of collaboration in knowledge/technology transfer and outreach/communication
• Dialogue drawing on documented experiences from participants
4. Benefits and challenges with societal collaboration
• Potential benefits from societal collaboration in terms of societal benefits and benefits potentially strengthening teaching and research
• Challenges in working with societal collaboration in terms of relational conditions
5. Landscape conditions and course synthesis
• Legal and ethical aspects of societal collaboration
• Overview of university policy developments
• Quality in societal collaboration—goal formulation, measures, monitoring, and assessment
Assignment: To pass the course, the participants needed to complete an assignment of practical (future) use for themselves, choosing one of the four alternatives below:
• Writing a real or fictive section of a research proposal targeting outreach, dissemination, or societal collaboration
• Revising a description for a course at any level (from undergraduate to Ph.D.), strengthening the course’s collaborative element
• Writing a societal collaboration portfolio and personal approach/perspective/strategy to be included in an academic qualification portfolio
• Revising or writing a strategic document that captures lessons from the course to strengthen the collaboration support function
efforts at universities (Fang, 2016; Watermeyer & Lewis, 2018; Watermeyer & Rowe, 2021). Recognizing the potential divergence in viewpoints between support staff and researchers, we identified the importance of fostering boundary-spanning discussions for interactive learning. By doing so, we aimed to create opportunities for mutual understanding and knowledge exchange that would contribute to the cultivation of reflexivity (cf. Jonsson et al., 2023).
Method
Aligned with our overarching objective, a comprehensive case study was undertaken to assess the pilot course, with particular attention given to how the participants perceived the course (cf. Merriam, 1998;Yin, 2014). The empirical data encompasses multiple data sources, capturing insights from distinct temporal vantage points spanning the pre-course, during-course, and post-course phases. By utilizing a diverse range of data collection methods and time points, we aimed to gain a holistic understanding of the participants’ experiences and how their perspectives evolved throughout the educational journey. Before offering the course, we collected documentation of participants’ previous societal collaboration experiences and perspectives through course applications and accompanying CVs. The ambition was to contrast their pre-understandings with their understanding after the finished course. During the course, we took field notes and observed the participants’ interactions and interests in specific course elements. We focused on capturing their reflections and the types of questions that were raised. All participants were initially informed that the course was part of a study, and all interviewees were further informed about the study and the use of the data. After the course, we conducted a survey to capture perceived experiences and learning outcomes. Drawing upon the dataset obtained, an interview guide was crafted to facilitate follow-up interviews. Out of the original cohort of 22 participants, a substantial majority of 18 individuals were willing to be interviewed. To uphold confidentiality and safeguard the identities of the respondents, pseudonyms were employed. Table 3 provides a comprehensive overview of the interviews conducted and the corresponding pseudonyms assigned.
The interviews were conducted in Swedish through Zoom due to the Covid-19 restrictions, using a semi-structured template (see Appendix 1) focusing on various themes related to the participants’ experiences and learning. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim.
We applied a data-centric open coding strategy in which the analytical process starts out with data that are fractured, conceptualized, and integrated to build theoretical insights (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). First, all authors carefully reviewed the data and engaged in general discussions focusing on participants’ experiences and insights from the course. This discussion laid the ground for a tentative coding frame that was transferred into a coding scheme in the software NVivo. All data were uploaded in NVivo, and the 18 interviewees were assigned as NVivo cases and classified according to six attributes (attended course, gender, seniority, profession, discipline, and university). Second, the material was processed and coded in NVivo through an abductive coding technique where we iteratively moved between coding themes that emerged in the raw data and our initial coding frame, in line with systematic combining approaches (Dubois & Gadde, 2002;Yin, 2014). This allowed for more reflexive sense-making of the material (Merriam, 1998), as we initially used the tentative coding frame to guide the analysis while it was continuously revised and new codes emerged from the data. Third, we searched for themes and patterns, both
Table 3 Overview of interviews
Pseudonym Profession Length of interview (minutes) Date of interview (2021) day/month Course occasion
Ari Teacher/researcher 40 03/03 On campus 2019
Ellis Teacher/researcher 61 05/03 -”
Cleo Teacher/researcher 73 30/03 -”-
Tory Teacher/researcher 68 22/03
Sasha Teacher/researcher 56 01/03
Drew Teacher/researcher 74 05/02 -”-
Kyle Teacher/researcher 61 01/03 -”-
Max Teacher/researcher 55 04/03 -”-
Dani Teacher/researcher 52 04/03 -”-
Austin Teacher/researcher 44 02/03 -”-
Dale Teacher/researcher 50 04/03 -”-
Alex Support staff 48 24/03 Online 2020
Kim Support staff 60 24/03
Charlie Support staff 60 23/03
Indy Support staff 42 22/03
Lou Teacher/researcher 52 23/03 -”-
Noa Teacher/researcher 62 23/03 -”-
Nico Support staff 61 01/03 -”-
manually and with the aid of crosstab and matrix queries in NVivo, combining interview classifications and codes. From this work, three overarching themes emerged, together with patterns that captured qualitative differences between participants’ experiences of the course. These patterns and themes were validated through continuous discussions between the researchers and triangulation between the multiple sources of data (Merriam, 1998).
Results
In the following section, we present and discuss our findings structured according to three themes that capture participants’ reflections on their experiences from the course to identify enabling conditions for developing skills and academic rigor toward a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration.
Theorizing Collaboration—the Value of Having Access to a “Smorgasbord”
An overall theme from participants’ accounts is the perceived value of having access to a “smorgasbord” of models and frameworks to support theorizing collaboration. This made it possible to navigate the research landscape of collaboration and gain insights into the scholarship of societal collaboration. Several informants emphasized that the orientation in existing research was a significant benefit from the course. Max, who in parallel with the course worked on a collaborative project, explains:
We got a lot of help from the course, with, like, probing the literature […] We have bought all the books, and we have, like, taken in everything. And you read over and over again as well.
Theorizing stimulated participants to consider their collaboration practices in light of different perspectives and models. An example comes from Indy:
The biggest yield I got, I feel, was that there was so much research […] it gave me some food for thought that we should think more about working, if you could say, on a scientific basis with collaboration.
Another example comes from Lou’s experience of learnings concerning their work with societal collaboration in teaching:
Even though I have worked with education for a long time, I may not have thought about educational collaboration in the way it was framed in the course. […] I have received a lot of insights that we could spin on here.
As Indy’s and Lou’s statements illustrate, participants discovered more evidencebased and structured ways of working with societal collaboration through insights into theoretical perspectives. Another recurring benefit was finding concepts and terms for describing collaboration activities already being carried out. Charlie illustrates this:
I got some Aha! experiences. Like putting into words phenomena that you have experienced, but may not have been able to really describe for yourself. It was a lot like that… I like neat models like this.
Some informants also emphasized that insights into theoretical perspectives were essential to developing a sense of rigor in their professions. These insights also relate to the accounts above on providing frames for communicating and explaining practices. Indy exemplifies this further:
I [sought] theoretical knowledge about collaboration and [wanted to] feel that this is my competence—that I wanted to strengthen it. As someone with subject competence at the university who wants to strengthen themselves in their subject, I felt that: Yes, but this is my niche, and here I would like to strengthen myself.
In addition, some participants experienced that they gained greater insight into challenges and critical perspectives through theories. Dani elaborates on the choice of literature:
[I] often return to certain texts as well, and the literature we had. And feel that I better understand certain things and why they are organized as they are. And problems. And [I] can […] describe difficulties and opportunities in a better way.
Participants not only found framings for challenges they had already experienced, but the theoretical perspectives also offered insights into unfamiliar problems, as explained by Kim:
And I think I have brought with me, like, different… yes, models and also any future problems that may arise with collaboration. […] I am aware of what can arise and different interests and motivations.
However, a few participants also indicated that the course theorized and problematized collaboration to an unnecessarily large extent.
[The course] also made collaboration perhaps more complicated than I myself have experienced it. […] So, I do not know. Now I’m theoretically oriented enough to appreciate it […] But… sometimes you can, like… As soon as researchers put their teeth into things, it becomes very complex. (Dani)
Two faculty members with extensive practical collaboration experience considered collaboration a purely practical pursuit with limited need for theorizing. Kyle describes it as follows:
[Collaboration] is quite a lot about tangible things such as information dissemination—how to create networks and how to…, who you invite to meetings and such things. … And I did not think we got there really in the course, such tangible things. It is not, like, researchable how one spreads information. Yes, maybe it is. I do not know. But I mean… But this is so much based on the fact that I am then very much a practitioner in the context.
However, Austin, in contrast to Kyle, did see a point in theorizing, but for other reasons:
I did not intend to […] sit at home and read books on things that are entirely different topics. […] And I’m not an economist or collaboration theorist, or whatever it is. And that’s not why I was there. I was there to discuss and get inspired.
Indeed, although the participants overall seemed to appreciate the theoretical perspective on collaboration, some requested more practical perspectives, including methods, checklists, and best practices. Interestingly, most of these were faculty members, who expressed more negative sentiments toward theorizing than support staff. One observation that points toward an explanation is that support staff participants tended to see a greater need to legitimize themselves to faculty and saw theoretical grounding as a means for achieving this. Charlie explains:
I think that I have gotten, so to speak, a theoretical foundation to stand on. And I wish I had [taken the course] several years ago, and got like a…, more weight in different arguments, more […] research to refer to, for example… when arguing for various things.
An Opportunity for Reflection and Reflexivity
The course targeted reflexivity through collective discussion to blend theory and practice by sharing experiences among participants from various contexts. The discussions encouraged the participants to reflect on their perspectives and provided an opportunity to draw on their experiences to conscious insights into assumptions about societal collaboration. Participants appreciated the opportunity to reflect with others and contribute to learning about others’ practices.
Well, there were several interesting conversations… Which made me reflect a little more during that time on what I do myself, how it fits in or does not fit in. But I also became a little extra-curious about some others and learned a little more about what they do and how they think. (Austin)
Informants also highlighted that the discussion gave insights into critical aspects of collaboration that they had not previously considered. This made them aware of specific challenges that made them question their assumptions. As Noa explains:
Because many of the conversations ended up very much on difficulties and obstacles and […] So, it has also opened my eyes of course, that it is not just flowers and green lawns. […] Yes, then I must have been a little blinded […] in that I think collaboration is positive in some way. So I was surprised that there were so many difficulties all the time, that everyone raised in the conversations.
Bringing together participants from diverse disciplines and universities stimulated participants’ reflections on collaboration. Some of the reflections related to crossdisciplinarity:
We came from different contexts, all of us that took the course. […] The opportunity for collaboration looks different for the different areas. […] I will not say that I understand the conditions for everyone, but [it is important] to be humble, to take in and try to understand, and ask people to, like… describe how they experience their conditions in different contexts, linked to collaboration. (Drew)
Similarly, Ari emphasizes the benefits of bringing together participants from different universities:
And it was good that it was from different universities. It was exciting to hear how others are doing things and to be able to discuss it.
On the second course occasion, the diversity widened as both faculty and support staff participated. This diversity was highlighted as positive by most participants. It provided good opportunities to engage in discussions leading to a better understanding of each other’s work roles and prerequisites to engage in a scholarship of collaboration. Lou, a faculty member, shares their experiences of discussions with support staff:
So I really think that you also got a greater understanding of what challenges [the support function] faces. […] Sometimes, you might whine a little about the support. * Little laugh * […] But I think I have gained a greater understanding of how the support works and so on.
Nico, a support staff member, shares their reflections in a way that mirrors Lou’s reflections:
I liked the discussions we had in the group about these issues on all occasions… Yes, but “how is the collaboration experienced by the [faculty] and what can we do to support them, how can we work?” has been incredibly rewarding.
Thus, combining various perspectives through collective discussions provided insights into how the conditions and understandings of societal collaboration vary between universities, collaboration forms, disciplines, and occupational roles. Some participants highlighted the need for conscious self-reflection by contemplating one’s own experiences with others and linking experiences to theory. This raised the awareness of their way of collaboration or new and different perspectives. Participants also stressed that there are not many opportunities for such reflection in contemporary academic life and that the course provided conditions for such reflection. However, several participants, mainly from the course given on campus, wished for more time for discussion. They felt discussions provided an understanding of general challenges related to societal collaboration and differences in how individuals and groups from diverse contexts perceive and approach issues. As Charlie states:
It is very interesting to hear what others do under similar conditions […] And sometimes it can be enough just to hear that others have the same problem, so you know that: “Okay, but then it is not… It is not our team that is wrong. Rather, this phenomenon occurs in all major universities.”
Participants also underlined the benefits of continuously meeting co-participants through peer interactions as it developed confidence that paved the way for more trustful conversations, stimulating reflections, and reflexivity.
… One of the most important aspects of that, I think, is that we started to get to know each other. So, one dared to be more revealing. … One… dared to make oneself a little vulnerable. … And you do not do that until you have some form of trust or…, between each other in the group. (Drew)
Many discussions were first held in groups of three or four, then in plenum. Several participants, like Dani from the on-campus course, found these group discussions to be a very valuable format for collective reflections:
And it worked well when we had, like, group discussions along with our reflections. Because then it happened that everyone spoke and you discussed, and you got to know each other. So I think it’s a good feature, that you have discussions in a small group. Discussions in large groups, like with reflections and so on, are difficult [...]. And that it is not just that you want to shine with your experiences.
Several participants underlined the importance of meeting face-to-face to encourage collective reflection. Yet, participants in the off-campus course experienced that group discussions worked relatively well online. Nico illustrates this:
It’s always a little nerve-wracking before you meet people. […] We work a bit like that, people, that you think it’s hard to meet new people. But it feels safe very quickly, just through one or two group discussions.
The participants were asked to prepare individually for each discussion session by writing about their reflections on the specific theme. Both Dani and Charlie underlined the usefulness of preparing in this way since it forced them into selfcontemplation that produced initial thoughts that could be used as a point of departure for collective reflections.
One was forced to formulate oneself. Because then you won some time during the discussions. You got straight into the core, somewhat, somehow. People had had time to think. It was good. (Charlie)
Despite these overall positive sentiments, some participants viewed these collective reflections differently. Sasha sometimes perceived the discussions to be too unstructured and called for more guidance:
It was very scattered and very… We had very much different…, came from different places and maybe also had different perceptions of what the course would contribute, in some way. […] At the same time, I also think that it is always very exciting to meet people from different places and with different thoughts. […] So that’s contradictory. […] maybe that [the lecturers] could also have been a little clearer with thoughts about the layout [for discussions]. Not be so careful to ensure that there are different opinions and that everyone is right.
Ari describes the discussion sessions as less valuable because they tended to be superficial and unsubstantial:
The discussions were… maybe interesting, like, from some perspective. But for me, it was a bit more… yes, almost * Laughter * […] It was very much, like, just talk.
Interestingly, participants questioning the usefulness of collective discussions were all faculty members from the first course occasion, when the group composition was more homogeneous (only faculty members) and the discussions took place face-to-face. Yet other participants from the same occasion stressed that the time for collective reflections was too short, indicating a perceived need for collective reflections.
A Need to Transform Knowledge into Practice
A prominent insight from our data was the perceived importance of using the knowledge acquired during the course to make it part of one’s scholarship. Indeed, participants with few opportunities to apply insights given their current work roles, or who changed roles after course completion, found the knowledge from the course less relevant.
The yield benefit in relation to the time spent… was perhaps not super high. […] But it is not because of the course, but because of my role. (Kyle)
In addition, Cleo highlighted that the course format gave limited opportunities to apply concrete learnings and called for a more practice-oriented pedagogy:
